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Notion Ink Adam Review - The saga of the Notion Ink Adam is a tale like many we could name -- it's the story of a tiny company struggling to.

Notion Ink Adam Review

The saga of the Notion Ink Adam is a tale like many we could name -- it's the story of a tiny company struggling to bring a vision to market, facing friction from investors, factories and the march of time itself. The difference is that the Adam captured the imaginations of gadget fiends like ourselves with ideas that were fantastic from day one and are still novel now that it's finally been released, including a paneled UI, full USB host functionality, and of course that Pixel Qi screen. But does the Adam deliver on the promises of unifying form and function with such technology? In two words: Not really.

Update: With a new software update, the Notion Ink Adam is slightly better now. If you asked us, we'd definitely still call it beta, but there's progress being made on the UI front.

At first blush, the Adam's actually a pretty handsome tablet, and it sports a unique design -- whereas most every recent slate is a variation on the original iPad formula, Notion Ink endowed its offspring with a sizable rump that serves a variety of functions. It holds a pair of stereo speakers, one at either end, with the unit's three-cell battery sandwiched in between; it serves as an axis around which the swiveling camera rotates; and it makes for a fantastic grip. At 1.6 pounds -- the same as the Motorola Xoom -- the Adam isn't quite light enough to prop up with a single hand when lying in bed, but the handle helps quite a bit, and a rubber mesh coating ensured that even when our arms got tired, we never dropped the slate accidentally. The black plastic construction doesn't scream style, but we quite liked that it was matte, keeping us from constantly soiling surfaces with our fingerprints.

While we're comparing with the Xoom, it's probably worth mentioning that even though the Adam actually has a slightly smaller 10-inch screen, the rest of the unit completely dwarfs Motorola's slate and most other tablets we've seen. It's not that the Adam is fat -- handle aside, its 14 millimeter girth is comparable to all but the latest batch of skin-and-bones rigs -- but rather that it's got a gigantic bezel surrounding the screen that no amount of photoshopping can hide.

The upper-left-hand corner of the bezel is where you'll find the Adam's four capacitive touch buttons, which are a disappointment in and of themselves. They're not backlit, provide no vibrating feedback, and are in a position where it's easy to brush them with stray gestures. We aren't completely sold on Google's virtual buttons in Honeycomb, which are always positioned at the bottom left corner of the screen, but at least we can use them in the dark and live without fear of exiting apps and canceling commands accidentally.

Underneath that bezel, however, there's something fantastic going on -- rival manufacturers take note -- enough full-sized ports crammed into that creamy white band to make the tablet into a potential laptop alternative. There's a lot of fuss about connecting tablets to keyboards and televisions as of late, but the Adam doesn't need a proprietary keyboard, cables or docks because it's got two full-sized USB ports and a full-sized HDMI slot. It detects USB peripherals automatically and seamlessly, as we discovered when we plugged in our wireless Logitech mouse and keyboard using their Nano receivers and had both work like a charm, and the Adam can do full 1080p display mirroring over that HDMI port. Unfortunately, the HDMI connection doesn't pass audio signals and may not line up the mouse cursor with the television properly (unless you've got a 1:1 pixel mapping option) so it's not quite the leanback experience we'd hoped, but we were definitely able to draft some business emails and browse the web without ever touching the screen.

And considering how many issues we had with that 10-inch, 1024 x 600 screen, it's probably just as well. Since the very first time we caught wind of the Notion Ink Adam on one cold December morn, its claim to fame was this -- it would be the first mass-market device to ship with a Pixel Qi screen, and a matte one at that. We've never been shy about professing our love for fingerprint- and glare-resistant surfaces, and we've long been fans of Pixel Qi's 3Qi display, a special dual-mode LCD which allows you to switch off the backlight and use the sun's rays to illuminate your images instead -- and we were particularly impressed to find that Notion Ink would be using Pixel Qi's wider viewing angle displays.

We're sorry to say that two of these promises simply weren't fulfilled. Not only do you have to affix an (included) screen protector to achieve the matte effect, but the Adam's viewing angles are terrible. Approach it from any angle but head-on and either the whites or blacks wash out, and if you tilt it to the left everything begins to turn a sickly yellow. The colors are also a bit washed out, and if you're a fan of deep, inky blacks you'd best look somewhere else, as the best the Adam can do is a shade of noisy purple. Moreover, the matte screen protector is fairly thick and we suspect it may be to blame for making the tablet's capacitive digitizer less effective than it should be, as it often felt like we had to press with a little bit of effort to get the Adam to respond to our touch. All that said, the Pixel Qi's reflective mode most certainly does work, and it does its job well, saving hours of additional battery life and making the screen quite viewable outdoors. The question is whether that's worth all the other tradeoffs.

Technically, the Adam runs a build of Android 2.2 (that's Froyo to you dessert lovers) but you'd be hard-pressed to determine that, as Notion Ink's skinned the entire thing with a user interface it calls Eden. The Eden UI is actually composed of a number of innovative concepts, like the Panel View you can see in the picture above, which eschews the standard icon-filled homescreen in favor of a series of miniaturized apps that you can scroll through. The effect is like having multiple Android phone apps open at the same time and on the same screen, putting a mobile browser, calendar, email and the like at your fingertips -- as well as controls for the Android media player and shortcuts to the last eight apps you've used. You open apps by activating a red ribbon which stretches horizontally across the screen, and you can narrow down choices quickly by tapping the first letter or two of the name you're looking for into the virtual keyboard -- which isn't bad, by the way, with fun typewriter clacks when you click and a set of dedicated arrow keys. If you'd rather see all your apps at once, there's also a standard homescreen where they're all stored, which you can access by tapping the clock.

Drag and drop an app from the ribbon onto the desktop and the Adam will attempt to open it in Panel View. Sadly, you can't just turn any app you want into a Panel, only the ones that Notion Ink specifically includes, and as of today those are precious few -- not to mention that those that come with the Adam are buggy and frustrating as a general rule. The interface is also slow to scroll, often unresponsive, and not every part responds the same way to Android's hardware buttons. We also had some very odd issues when the tablet went to sleep -- sometimes, it refused to wake up without rebooting, and once it spontaneously reset the internal clock to January 1st, 2009. Oh, and on occasion when the UI was acting unresponsive, the entire tablet would crash to a black screen and reboot spontaneously. Not good.

Browser: Notion Ink's tabbed Webkit browser looks and feels great at first, and loads pages fast -- full desktop webpages, mind you, not the mobile versions that Motorola's Xoom defaults to. It sports snappy inertial scrolling, has a host of shortcuts for bookmarks, text selection and screengrabs, and there's a nifty virtual thumbwheel that lets you add, kill, and swap between tabs. Assuming you have the APK handy, it'll even do Flash. Unfortunately, it's alo not quite stable enough for us to trust it with critical browsing sessions -- a number of times we returned to the browser, and found it had forgotten all our tabs, and on occasion we encountered an outright crash. What's more, there's actually a foolproof way to ensure it crashes: just click on that fancy tab wheel a few times in a row, and you'll be greeted with the Force Close dance. The panel view is rather disappointing, too, as though it does keep a simple list of the full browser's active tabs, you can't actually view any of them in the miniature.

Mail'd: There's no Gmail here, but Notion Ink provides an alternative -- Mail'd, an IMAP / POP3 client (reportedly based on the popular K-9 Mail for Android) that can automatically set up an IMAP version of Gmail with just your email address and password -- though we had quite a bit of trouble getting the setup screen to recognize user input. It's got a fairly useful two-panel tablet layout for browsing and reading email, and a full-screen view as well, but in most every way it's a far cry from Google's Honeycomb Gmail client. Again, the Panel view doesn't automatically sync with what you're doing in the full app, and doesn't automatically update the miniature inbox it provides.

Sniffer: A quick, attractive and intuitive three-panel file manager, Sniffer lets you browse the contents of the Adam's internal storage, microSD card and any attached USB drives, and copy, move, delete, rename, preview, play and search for files. There's also a basic task manager included, and the Panel View is fairly nice, giving access to the full functionality one panel at a time, though once again, it won't keep track of where you were in the fullscreen version.

Calendar: An attractive full-screen or single Panel calendar that kind of misses the point -- it doesn't import or export events to or from any existing calendar software you might use, so you'll be entering every event by hand and referencing them exclusively on the Adam. Update: If you dive into the Adam's settings menu, there is indeed a way to sync an Exchange account.

Canvas: This one's a fairly interesting -- if pretty basic -- fullscreen painting and photo editing app, which lets you composite three layers at a time, with a full color picker for four custom hues and control over opacity and brush size. There's also eraser, bucket and text tools and a variety of photo filters and tweaks you can access by dropping into edit mode.

Calculator: Notion Ink's built a hefty scientific calculator here which processes multiple functions in a row, and has a virtual tape output so you can keep track of the history. Shrink it down to Panel View and it becomes your standard calculator.

Facebook: This isn't a full-screen app, but rather the mobile version of Facebook's website in a Panel view, along with a notifications bar that theoretically pings the Facebook servers to pull in your social feed automatically. That'd be nice, because the mobile website doesn't ever refresh itself, but we say theoretically because we couldn't actually get notifications to work.

Music is just a play / pause toggle on the homescreen for tunes you've got running in the plain jane Android app, and the Video Player seems to be a re-skin of Android's default Movies app which doesn't play any additional codecs. Notion Ink's Settings pane is actually pretty neat, turning Android's nesting menus into a visually pleasing, intuitive full screen. Nimbuzz is bundled for chat, Quickoffice for basic productivity and Solaro Mobile for an educational twist; all require registration to begin with. OsmAnd is your Maps replacement, with downloadable (and locally cached) open-source maps for different regions around the globe, with the unfortunate compromise of being rather slow. That's about it, really, for included apps, and there's no app store to download more, as the promised Genesis store isn't out yet -- you'll have to sideload third-party app stores and apps if you want to do anything else with the tablet. (Protip: creatively acquired copies of Google Maps and YouTube work just fine, though Gmail and Market didn't.)

So that's just what we did -- we grabbed the Amazon Appstore, SlideME and a batch of APKs from our handy Froyo phone and put them to work on the Adam. That dual-core 1GHz Tegra 250 actually makes for a fairly potent device, as we discovered in a number of tests, with the Adam scoring between 1,700 and 2,100 in Quadrant, calculating 37 MFLOPS in Linpack, achieving 42.6fps in Nenamark, and speedily playing a variety of Android games, whenever the Adam decided it was in a good mood and let them run without crashing. We also sideloaded Flash 10.2 onto the Adam, and it runs in the browser fairly well, though individual videos felt like they took a tad longer to load. Interestingly enough, the Adam's sensor package performed far more quickly than many other tablets we've used, getting us a super-speedy GPS lock in maps, and nigh-instantly rotating the screen when we shifted the Adam's orientation. We're not big fans of the stereo speakers, however. Two are certainly better than one, and their audio is mildly clear, but they have so little bass that the only thing they'll rattle is the confidence in your purchase.

We mentioned earlier that the Pixel Qi screen extends the Adam's battery life, but it's still not as good as we were led to believe: if you were hoping for the minimum 15 hours battery life that Notion Ink promised, you'll have to look elsewhere.

We did manage to make it through a full 24-hour day with very mild use and found it just about ready to die when we woke up the next morn, but in our standard battery rundown test (which loops the same video, with WiFi turned on, and the screen at roughly 65 percent brightness) the Adam managed only 8 hours, 38 minutes with the backlight off. Using the Pixel Qi's full color LCD, we managed only 5 hours, 52 minutes before that 24Wh battery died. Mind you, that's comparable to the original Galaxy Tab, but decidedly weak for a 10-incher.

The 3.2 megapixel camera attached to the Adam has one neat trick -- it swivels to swap between front- and rear-facing orientations, and it automatically flips the image when it detects which way is up. However, it also smacks of being very, very cheap, both in terms of the noisy, overexposed images it produces and the general flimsy build quality. There's also the little matter of an exceptionally annoying autofocus issue. When you launch the camera, it will attempt to autofocus several times in a row (with absolutely no prompting from you) and if you try to take a photo without waiting for it to finish, you'll add a hefty layer of blur on top of the noise and extraneous light. Not a delicious sandwich, we assure you.

Notion Ink truly did come up with a number of fantastic ideas for the Adam tablet. They do show. But so little of their light shines through the muck of buggy software and touchy hardware that we're afraid even the best of them will be completely dismissed and ignored. If Notion Ink had delivered on its promises of a miniature touchscreen office where full Android apps run side by side in perfect harmony and multitask with ease, we'd award it high marks -- all current tablets claim to enable productivity, but most settle to be simple entertainment consoles. Even Google's Honeycomb OS still struggles to find a way to unify the worlds of tablet and phone, and Notion Ink's prototype shows a way it could be done.

Features like USB host functionality, a desktop-class web browser, a sunlight-readable screen and a multitask-friendly interface aren't just value-add bullet points that justify a higher price -- they're the difference between a tablet that can augment an existing computer, and one that can replace it altogether and thrust users into a new paradigm. We're sad to see the Adam couldn't make it happen, but there's still an opportunity for other manufacturers to take up the torch.

Update: According to Notion Ink the Calendar app can sync, but you need to manually add your account information in to make it happen. We're working on verifying this.

Dear people considering buying the adam tablet. Please see notioninkscam.com. You will learn a lot and it can save you a LOT of trouble.

We have also gone ahead and given the entire UI a facelift and are proud to present to you Eden 1.5 - with a cleaner and fresher user experience along with some major tweaks for performance improvement.

We are also pleased to announce that the Adam will now have Dolphin Browser HD preinstalled along with the improved and re-skinned Notion Ink browser.

Get another Android Tab. The Adam is kind of cheaply built and offers nothing special over the competition. They say it comes with 2.3 but who cares? Gingerbread on a tablet is horrible. Just look at the HTC Flyer. And Amazon Kindle and Dolphin Browser can be easily be downloaded on an Android Tab. The only thing the Adam offers is the PixelQi. Get an Asus Transformer. Best Android Tab, cheap, has Honeycomb, Tegra 2, etc. Here's the engadget review for the Asus Transformer. There's a shortage of them, but Asus will ramp up the production. http://www.engadget.com/2011/0...

They have not officially got honeycomb yet, its just pieced together by the hacking community, with GPS and camera not functional. According to the blog you will have to wait a few months for icecream sandwich.Other tablets are coming with full fledged functionality out of the box.

IF you want to see the potential of the ADAM and some of the mods avail check out my youtube videos http://www.youtube.com/user/no...

For the record, HDMI does output audio. You just need to make sure the audio on your video player is greater than zero. I have good results with it in the middle range. I run stock ROM and agree the biggest problem is being a modified Android 2.2 that isn't fully baked. With that said, I have still managed to find apk's that allow me to do everything I wanted with the tablet. From video chat to torrents to accessing a media server to reading books & comics. I own a Qi model as well and love the ability to read on the train even with the sun blaring.

I pesonally own a Pixil Qi Adam and love it. The hardware is very good and solid. The whole problem is the software that they have tried to use. The first thing most people have done is flashed it with another ROM. I'm sure the review would be much different.

What excited everyone over a year ago was the promise from the hardware. Why did NI spend all that time and money developing Eden? Couldn't they have shipped a straight Android version 6 months earlier and used the money rolling in from that to develop Eden? I don't particularly want to have to learn a new way of using a tablet even if it should prove better.

Ignoring your self deprecating stereotypes I agree on the remorse bit. I got one of the first adams and was able to sell it before the reality caught up with the hype. It had some good ideas but a terrible device.

Most consumers take for granted the R&D costs and manufacturing controls that are involved in a good product. Hopefully they can sell their design patents(if they claim any) to salvage their venture.

Notion Ink has lost this round with their tablets by releasing an older chip with a pricing almost equivalent with the Asus Transfomer [$40-$50 difference].

Can you please at least do an unofficial re-review with one of the ROMs? Just to see that the problems are nearly all software, and the hardware is actually really quite good (other than the wimpy battery :( )

They should do a re-review with the new update released just after a few days that they wrote the review. The new update is much more stable and has the tegra 2 optimally clocked.

I am however hoping to be able touse it without having to be a geek - updates should be easy and done automatically so tha all I notice is good performance. Is it doing that now or not, can you guys answer that?

for a start up like Notion ink, the idea of being able to pull out a hardware device that competes against Giants, like apple, samsung, motorola is a big win. even if it fails horribly in sales. I think there will be other iterations that will be more stronger.

I really hope Notion can pull the Adam out of it's buggy state more towards the direction that engadget appeared to really like in January.

There's a lot of promise in this device. Maybe NI are at fault for trying to build the perfect device (hardware wise). There are a few things here that Apple/Samsung/Motorola table owners wouldn't mind having as a part of their devices.

The 3 is a justifiable score but I would like it if engadget broke down the review into separate areas, give a score for each and then provide the overall score as a weighted average of some sort. It would seem a lot less arbitrary IMHO. :)

DSP support, so now equalizer will work in better way. Soon we are adding more bass boost in the speakers as well (not a part of this update).

That message is about an official update. I bet that the ADAM will be a lot more stable with it and faster since the Tegra 2 will be overclocked!

I do think that the points about software a valid. it is certainly Beta at best. However, since it was available by invite, to people without obscuring that fact, i really don't see that as a problem....

I must say that Notion Ink having released the Kernel for downloading to the public at large bumps this score up to at least a 6/10 in my mind (I think that it should have received that in the first place, but that's just me). I say good on them for having a tablet with awesome hardware, and making it easy (or at least easier) for anyone who wants to, to tinker with the software.

Fusion Garage hacks $200 off of Grid 10 tablet, aims to play the undercutting game -- Engadget221 AT&T announces Mango lineup: new phones and updates coming this fall -- Engadget217 Wacom Inkling digital sketch pen hands-on (video) -- Engadget192 Bit.ly quantifies internet impatience, old links get no love -- Engadget182 3M makes Mary Lou Jepsen's dreams come true, showers Pixel Qi with cash -- Engadget173 Crickey!

Notion Ink Adam Review from CNET User

Carosyrup said -

• Pros: Screen works in direct sunlight, lightening-fast processor, plenty of ports, unique UI, swiveling camera, shaped to hold in one hand.
• Cons: Camera is almost too slow to use, angular edges make for a hand-ache, UI is underdeveloped and unsupported, viewing angles are nonexistent and colors are splochy and washed out, no "safely remove hardware" function, random reboots, random file deletions.
• Summary: I've had the Notion Ink Adam for a couple of months now, and its hdmi out and standard USB ports have proven useful time after time. There is a mini-USB instead of a micro-USB, however, which seems an odd choice for a product that has yet to be released on the market. The Adam's unique shape would attract some and deter others, since it does not lay flat. The top of the device is shaped like a cylinder that extends behind the it, which accommodates for the swiveling camera and circular speakers on either side. This makes the device bulkier, but I find it also provides a substantial "handle" on the device that makes it easier to hold in one hand to view or carry around. The screen is wishy-washy, but I expected this from a Pixel Qi display. I don't mind this since I spend ample time outdoors and in the car where the transflective display is a gift, but I wouldn't advise buying the Pixel Qi version if you plan on only using the device indoors. I have to stand very still in order to take pictures, and the camera's auto-focus often does not sync up with the photo capturing, so many pictures come out blurry.

  Though I often use the USB ports, I also often get corrupted files and once almost wiped my friend's entire mp3 player. There is no "safely remove hardware" button, and since android has not yet thought to accommodate USB port functionality and features, Notion Ink should have.

  If there is no SD card in the device, pictures are all lost upon rebooting unless they are manually moved to safe locations on the device since they are automatically saved in the "sd" region of the memory.

  The "Eden" interface is all but useless. The idea of having "leaves" that make for improved multitasking and improved battery life would only work if there was enough support for it, which of course there is not considering the age of the company. Rooting the android market onto the device and installing an alternate launcher (ADW Launcher for me) is a must, and boosts this device into the realm of iPad competition.

foxfoxred said -

• Pros: Very industrial look! brilliant in playing videos and internet! GPS works beautifully well!
• Cons: Android Market is not there, can only pre-order
• Summary: I really love this product, if you are looking for something other than iPad, do consider it, but its not easy to buy this product!

arvindsg say -

• Pros: Not many maybe i could say good hardware, but with pixel qi screen forget about good multimedia experience with heavily washed out colors Ability to easily add custom software on device could be the only reason to buy
• Cons: OS is still in alpha version(atleast from stability point of view) User interface is not at all intuitive(clicking time shows you list of applications etc). Battery life is horrible Videos/screncasts of ui are misleading, some of the snappy screens show
• Summary: Please do me a favour, Don't buy this, product- if you still want it look for mine in garbage bag, should be in there very soon :)

Notion Ink Adam Review